


Off hands, into hands.

by Anonymous



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Fix-It, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:27:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27629516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: On a continent ravaged by war, Geralt wants his hands full again.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 2
Kudos: 112
Collections: Anonymous





	Off hands, into hands.

It has been years since he sent Jaskier away.  _ If life could give me one blessing, it would be to take you off my hands. _ How many years exactly, Geralt cannot say with anything resembling certainty. Long enough that the continent has been ravaged from one corner of the map to the last remaining bastion in the North. There is nothing Nilfgaard has not touched. Children are beginning to walk, talk and think for themselves that have never known anything but this endless war. For a war it still is, no matter how weak the bedraggled shape of the resistance. How long that might hold out, Geralt can say with an equal lack of certainty. 

Time has never held much significance to Geralt, but the same cannot be said for his erstwhile travelling companion. 

Jaskier looks older. Years ago Yennefer of Vengerburg had teased him for imagined grey hairs and crow’s feet, and he had taken offense to it. Geralt can see real ones now, a smattering of them at Jaskier’s temples. There he sits, in a rundown tavern half a day’s ride from Troy, overlooking the remnants of a rudimentary dam on the Buina, built years ago to keep away invaders that had crossed the river in a day in blatant spite of the obstacle. The tavern rose out of the ashes of that battlefield --  _ Dam’s End,  _ the words are crudely painted on the sign outside. And beneath the stench of piss, sweat, and other traces man leaves of himself wherever he goes, lingers the magical signature of a bloody, desperately pitched battle. There Jaskier sits, solitary in the corner, not quite looking forlorn but certainly missing the sunny disposition Geralt had thought as essential a part of him as anything else.

Geralt realizes much too late that he stares. He realizes much too late that Jaskier has caught him out, that he has been recognized. 

Might have expected some surprise on the bard’s features — if not that, then hurt. No such sentiment makes itself plain in Jaskier’s eyes, nor in the hard set of his mouth. 

Geralt has been caught staring. He can hardly turn on his heel and run. 

Jaskier doesn’t start hurling choice insults at him when Geralt slides a tankard of ale his way. Passable quality, in this village. Quite passable. The show of civility is unexpected, at odds with all the facets of Jaskier’s temper he has become acquainted with over the years. It is more, Geralt thinks, than he deserves. When Jaskier takes a sip Geralt takes the seat across from him. An exchange of sorts, ale for company, however fleeting. 

“Jaskier,” Geralt greets, not allowing a hint of the unsteadiness he feels to seep into his voice. Still, his voice has been all but unused these past days he had spent crossing the woods along the Gwenllech into Redania. The name leaves his throat raw, pained. 

_ Damn it, Jaskier.  _ His voice had been raw then, too, the last time he’d spoken the bard’s name. Well, he got his wish, he has lived with the finality of his wish these past years, stopped counting the days after he had desperately raced after the bard, days too late, and found not a trace of him. Then the war had begun, and he had needed to fill his previously emptied hands with Ciri, had needed to see to her safety. Jaskier had not faded from his mind, never for long, at least, but he had faded from the earth, it seemed to Geralt. No songs could be heard that Geralt could trace back to him, though the only songs that have gripped the continent in recent years have been testaments to what horrors mankind thinks to bestow on itself, what monsters it may turn out in the pursuit of its interest. 

“Geralt,” Jaskier says softly, inclining his head in greeting. Geralt is not sure what he can smell on Jaskier. The tavern is too crowded, the smell of lingering spells too overpowering for Geralt to sort through all the layers heaped over that distinct note of Jaskier’s emotions. 

“Are you well?” 

“Tolerably,” Geralt answers. He’s had no trouble on the road, and that is all a witcher may reasonably ask for. That Geralt wants more -- much more than he should -- is only another count against him. That he cannot be content with his lot is his greatest failing, in a manner. 

“Glad to hear it, glad to hear it,” Jaskier claims, nodding distractedly. 

“And yourself?”

“Oh, one gets on,” Jaskier dismisses, waving a careless hand around. Geralt is tempted to still it, to feel if it is older, like the rest of him, or still soft as it ever was when Jaskier bandaged him, or tended to him in the bath. He doesn’t move a muscle. “One gets around, but by Melitele’s tits, does the war wear a man out. I might retire.” 

That must mean he is still in business. Or at the very least in  _ a  _ business, because his lute is noticeably absent. A remainder of Jaskier’s old vanity surfaces, and he raises two self-conscious fingers to his temple, as though he could smooth away the grey, the years lost between them, with a simple but insistent touch. 

“The grey suits you,” Geralt forces himself to admit. He keeps his hand very still so that he doesn’t do something foolish; reach out and rub the soft grey hairs at Jaskier’s temple, for one, to see if he can effect what Jaskier’s could not. Perhaps Geralt must be the one to bridge the gap his hands have made between them. Yes, that seems fitting. 

“Before long I’ll have a head of hair to rival yours,” Jaskier muses, ignorant or pretending to be ignorant of the turmoil beneath Geralt’s skin. “Might go around and claim to be the White Wolf so often sung about.” 

Geralt scowls.

It is in poor taste -- surely Jaskier will have heard that Nilfgaard has been dogged in its pursuit, surely he cannot have missed the posters, the rewards offered. Only someone with a death wish would think it right to pretend to be Geralt of Rivia. 

“Only joking, Geralt,” Jaskier assures him, softly. He sets down his finished tankard of ale, stands, and pats down his doublet. “Thank you for the ale. Now I’ve got to be heading out.” 

“Just passing through?” 

“It would appear so.” 

A feeling nags at Geralt, that he has driven the bard from this tavern. That was never his intention. “Fuck,” he growls at his own poor handling of the unexpected reunion. 

He stands, moving to follow Jaskier. Leaves coin enough on the table to satisfy even the most cutthroat proprietor. Ends up finding the bard at the stables, patting the flank of a grey mare. Sturdy thing, she looks to be. Young, no older than five. 

“Where will you go?” 

The bard does not look surprised that Geralt followed him. 

“East by Southeast, I think,” Jaskier squints at the dying sun on the horizon. There is no bitterness in his voice when he says, “always wanted to see Loc Muinne, me. I’ll keep out of your way.” Only a smile and a quick wave of his hand.  _ If life could give me one blessing, it would be to take you off my hands.  _ Geralt doesn’t smell bitterness, either. Only a sort of resignation saturates the air between them. Easier to smell now, once they’re out of the throng of the tavern. War wears a man down right along with the country, no matter how indirectly involved. 

A sharp note of pain to accompany his final words, that is what registers most prominently to Geralt. Jaskier mounts his horse with an ease Geralt finds startling, against all odds. Geralt cannot help himself. He steps close, taking the reins into his hands, trying to show that  _ here, Jaskier, I have you in hand, I want you on my hands, in them. Never leave them _ . Jaskier lets himself be kept for a while, smells indulgent. A beauty, she is. Roach would like her, he supposes. The one horse she might not snap at on first instinct. 

“You don’t need to keep out of my way, Jaskier.” 

The apology — long overdue, no doubt — is on the tip of his tongue. Jaskier speaks before he can offer it, with a resolute smile playing around his lips. “The days when my actions were dictated by you, Geralt of Rivia, are some five years in the past.” 

Five years, then. That’s how long it has been since Geralt snapped Jaskier’s heartstrings in two after his own were justly mutilated. There is no malice in it, never was in Jaskier, even when Geralt turned the brunt of his misplaced anger on him. Still, the words cut as harshly as a claw. Left untreated, left unaddressed, the wound will fester. 

“If I were to make my way East by Southeast, Jaskier,” he asks, staring at the mare’s twitching neck when he can no longer bear to search the bard’s eyes. “Would you turn elsewhere?” 

“That would make me a very sorry fool indeed,” whispers Jaskier. 

He takes the reins out of Geralt’s grasp. Takes himself off of Geralt’s hands, again. Geralt lets him, because he can do nothing else so long as the words do not come to him. “See you around, Geralt.” 

Will he?

———

Geralt sees Jaskier on the road, weeks after the brief encounter at  _ Dam’s End _ . Jaskier has set up a small camp, bedded down next to his horse. They’re two days from the nearest village, way off the beaten path. If the bard asks, Geralt will admit that he followed his trail. 

“Geralt,” Jaskier greets him evenly, not surprised at all, this time. “What brings you to my neck of the woods?” 

“Yours, Jaskier?” 

The bard spreads out his arms, meaningfully. “I’ve claimed this solitary spot for my own.” 

A solitary spot it is, ensconced safely between thicket and low trees. Anyone looking for trouble would have to veer quite strongly off the road to Ban Gleán. Doubtful anyone will. The war has burned through the East and left it docile to Nilfgaard’s rule. Not a very strong presence of soldiers, here. Geralt hasn’t taken note of more than a handful of dozens since he left Hagge, reassured that Jaskier had passed through by a very bribable innkeeper. 

“Large enough for the both of us,” grumbles Geralt. He tacks on, “safer, too.” 

“Are you concerned for my safety?” 

“Hm.” 

“Flatterer.” 

Geralt has no excuses to give. Doesn’t want to, either. He settles on the ground across from Jaskier’s log. They build a small fire in silence, hands touching now and then. It’s nice, but Geralt’s lack of apology — which he intends to remedy, if only he had the words! — hangs in the air between them. Chokes him. Does Jaskier feel it, too? 

“How have you been, Jaskier?” 

“Well.” Jaskier sets out his dinner. After looking at Geralt rather strangely for a while, he tosses an apple towards him. Geralt catches it easily, hardly feels the impact of it on the skin of his hand. “For Roach,” he insists. “I can feel her eyeing my provisions.” 

Geralt grunts. Splits the apple in two, goes to give half to roach and half to Jaskier’s mare. Lovely horse, doesn’t seem to take any issue with Geralt, which is a rare thing. Most creatures have a natural wariness of witchers instilled in them. Supposes it must be the lingering smell of death, but that’s saturated the continent entire. Besides, how long has it been since Geralt took up a contract? Jaskier’s horse must be used to smelling death wherever she goes, young as she is -- that must be it. 

“Where are you headed, Geralt?” 

He doesn’t have an answer for Jaskier that isn’t  _ wherever you are. Let me keep you, place yourself back into my hands.  _ Now that he’s found Jaskier again, now that it has become clear that Jaskier bears him no active ill will -- quite the opposite, Jaskier had looked and smelled relieved, when he had taken note of Geralt’s approach -- he can hardly imagine leaving the bard to his own devices once more. He would have wasted even more, would have wasted all. 

Taken off of Geralt’s hands, well and truly, unreachable, alien to his touch. Geralt has long found out that he prefers to have his hands full, but much too late, still. Or perhaps not. There might be time yet. “Where are  _ you _ headed?” 

“West, I think,” says Jaskier, “after Loc Muinne. Oxenfurt, to calm my poor mother’s nerves, and then Novigrad, perhaps. Nothing like the coast in fall. ”

“Never seen it.” 

“No, I don’t imagine you would have, Geralt.” 

“Might head West,” Geralt probes, biting into his own mealworm-infested dinner. He doesn’t much care for the little weevils in his food, but he won’t waste what’s in front of him. Foodwise, at least. A dreadful sense that he has already wasted too much of everything else will not leave him be. Time, for one, where Jaskier is concerned. The grey of his temples is as stark a proof as he will ever need. Twenty years with Jaskier, and Geralt had wasted most of them grumbling and grousing and never really saying what he ought to. Never really content with what he had, but impossibly hesitant to do something about it. He might have done something. Jaskier might have let him. No way to know now, really. 

“Whatever would you do West?” 

“What would you?” 

“Visit my mother, as I said. And they’ve a fondness for musicians in Novigrad.” 

Jaskier shrugs. “I’ve been there many times these past years.” 

Since Geralt drove him off. Jaskier has been striking out on his own for years, off Geralt’s hands. What is that, but proof that he had only ever allowed Geralt to carry him, had never really needed his protection? Indulgent of Geralt. Somehow, he must have known Geralt for a liar when he said he wanted no one to rely on him before Geralt had known. And hadn’t Geralt shown himself as a liar when, time and time again, he proved that he wanted Jaskier on his hands, and his hands on Jaskier? Twenty years. Fuck. 

“I am sorry,” he finally grits out, all too aware that it isn’t enough. 

“I know,” Jaskier smiles, simple as anything. “I know because I know you looked for me, afterwards.” 

“Hm.” 

“Travel with a witcher for twenty years and you begin to get a grasp of his habits and motivations,” Jaskier muses, crossing his arms. 

“I should not have spoken to you as I did on the mountain.” He tries again, and thinks that sentence is already much better. 

“Perhaps not, no,” concedes Jaskier. “You’ll know better now, won’t you, Geralt?” 

“I will.” 

“Glad to hear it.” Jaskier truly sounds it. Then he makes to prepare for bed and Geralt does not know what else to say. He settles for a night-long watch. No monsters dare draw near. 

In the morning, Jaskier begins the final leg of his journey to Loc Muinne. Geralt follows. 

———

The silence between them is new, if not uncomfortable. Jaskier does not smell upset, or hurt, or even angry. But it is the bard who now enforces the distance Geralt had always pretended to prefer between them, a pretense he had only ever let slip when Jaskier was fast asleep next to him. That much is plain. 

Jaskier peers up at him owlishly when Geralt pushes a bowl of stew towards him in another crowded tavern, filled to the brim with the latest wave of refugees, coming from nowhere and going right back to it in the morning. He’ll eat both bowls if Jaskier’s not hungry, or if his pride means his refusal. 

“What will you do?” 

Novigrad has burned to the ground. They’ve no need for bards, nor for witchers, though Geralt no longer lies to Jaskier by pretending to look for contracts. That washed away with his apology, with Jaskier’s quiet acceptance of his presence. 

For once, Jaskier does not answer immediately. 

“I’ve not the faintest notion,” he says, after a long stretch of silence during which he had watched Geralt scarf down the contents of his bowl. “Might become a fisherman. The northern coast is lovely, this time of year. Where the Braa runs into the sea the fish fly onto your plate straight from divine springs, they say.”

Geralt doesn’t ask who says that. Possibly it’s only Jaskier who says it, and it is the last point Geralt wants to argue, at present. 

“What about you, Geralt?” 

What, indeed? 

He takes a deep breath, reaching across the table. Jaskier’s hand is warm underneath his, soft and forgiving as the rest of him. The bard watches the scene unfold with restrained interest, keeping himself poised in stillness.

“The northern coast sounds lovely, Jaskier.” 

The bard smiles. 


End file.
